Gossamer Lines on the Skin
by reniRCx
Summary: Cristina relates inexplicably to a teenage patient. Flashbacks. Angst. TW/Warning for cutting/self-harm, suicide.


A/N: Wrote this in one night, it started out as a bit of venting for stuff I'm currently going through, and turned into this. I hope it's written in an entertaining format for those of you out there who are not me. xD Warning for cutting/self harm and suicide.

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><p>Gossamer Lines in the Skin<p>

"Emily Wood, 16, two deep lacerations to the wrist, BP 90 over 60 and falling!" the EMT rattled out as he ran around to open the ambulance. Two concerned older people, most likely parents, sat in the ambulance next to a small unmoving form in strapped to a gurney.

"Huh. Only one way you get those kinds of injuries," Alex murmured.

"We did our best to stop the bleeding in the field, but there could be major arterial damage," the nameless EMT continued as they wheeled the gurney toward the ER.

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><p>The first time it happened, Cristina was ten and it wasn't even her fault. She'd been walking smugly away, head held high, from Mitch Smith's taunts, just as she had taught herself, when she tripped and accidentally sliced her hand on a section of chain-link fence.<p>

At first she panicked, seeing blood. Blood was terrible. Blood meant screaming and ambulances and death. Mitch ran away without a word, either to find an alibi should she tattle or if he really was a nicer person at heart, tell a grown-up.

Later on, Cristina would believe that it was instinct, the way she pressed her other sleeve over the shallow cut and made her way inside to a bathroom, where she numbly washed it off and wrapped a paper towel around it to stop the bleeding. In the future, she would believe that it was her natural skill that led her to take care of it herself. In reality, going to anyone else with it never even occurred to her.

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><p>"No arteries were severed. She'll be completely fine- physically- in a few weeks," Cristina said to the distraught parents about an hour later. "But given the nature of her injuries, I highly recommend a psych consult. And by highly recommend, I mean I'm going to order one and you have to choose whether to consent. Which I highly recommend," Cristina rambled.<p>

She walked away after replacing the chart, instructed a nurse to refer the case to psych, and moved onto the next case in her file, choosing not to think of Emily Wood.

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><p>The first <em>real <em>time, Cristina was fourteen. Sounds of fighting had been leaking into her nights for weeks, and one day when she got home from school (volleyball practice, really, she couldn't stand to go home directly after school and be there all night) she took a steak knife up to her room with her. That night, she used it as glass broke in the living room and her mother and her mother's boyfriend screamed at each other, words and intent perfectly clear even from the floor above.

She cared for it after, just as before. Three parallel scratches on her thigh- if anyone bothered to ask, a cat had done it. The next day after school, she walked to the drugstore and bought a bottle of Vitamin E cream. She'd heard somewhere that it reduced scarring.

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><p>It was purely die to her assigned schedule that Cristina passed by Emily's room twice in the next two hours. She woke up, talked to a rep from psych for awhile, and then sat still in the bed while the psych guy talked to her parents. Suddenly, all Cristina wanted to do was to go check her chart one more time, exchange a few words with this so typical patient, ask why.<p>

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><p>When Cristina was sixteen, she dated Edmond Kowalski. Their first date was pizza and a movie, and Cristina may have talked a <em>bit <em>too much but he seemed to be into her. Their next date was of Edmond's choosing- a party. One of the parties that Cristina had spent years hearing about after the fact- whose parents had caught them with alcohol, who'd been taken down to the police station, who'd been on the really heavy drugs.

Edmond tried to spike Cristina's drink three times, offered her two cigarettes, and offered her weed once. When Cristina declared that she was leaving, Edmond didn't follow.

He wasn't worth it, then. For years, it had been Cristina and her dream against the world, and it had been silly of her to think that something as simple and mundane as a boyfriend could change that. She was right to deny his requests. She was going to be a doctor. She was going farther in life than _anyone _at that party.

The routine, later, was comforting. One slit, deeper than usual, on her wrist. Same antiseptic, same bandage, same Vitamin E cream, new lies. Always new lies.

The next day, there was a note in Cristina's locker.

It had all been on a dare. He had never wanted anything to do with Cristina.

She should have expected this. She shouldn't care about this. She was too far above people like him to be affected by this.

That didn't stop her eyes from filling with tears and the helpless feeling of wanting her knife _right now._

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><p>The fourth time she passed, Cristina walked inside. The television was on, but Emily was staring absentmindedly at the ceiling. "I'd like to check your sutures," Cristina said briskly.<p>

Emily looked at her, and nodded slowly in consent. She was a bit pale from blood loss, and there were heavy bags under her eyes.

The sutures were perfectly fine, of course. As Cristina noted this on the chart and pointlessly signed off, Emily finally spoke. "Have you ever wanted to just end it all?" Her voice was monotonous and gravely.

"No," Cristina immediately responded, and truthfully. Then she paused, setting the chart down. "Not quite," she added, quieter. Maybe she pulled her sleeve up, just a little. Maybe Emily got a flash of the thin, puckered scar on Cristina's wrist from that one terrible night that had never quite vanished. And maybe not.

Through all of it, Cristina never went near thoughts of suicide. One day, she was going to change the world. She had a dream worth living and dying for, something to carry her forward. Whatever happened, she always had that ahead of her.

Emily was proof of what Cristina may have become without that.

"I'm a doctor," Cristina said, unable to suppress memories of the long years where she prided herself in the fact that one day, she would be able to say that. "I'm needed. I save lives, I help people."

Emily looked at Cristina more curiously. "It must be great to think that."

"Who's saying you can't?" Cristina asked, her voice clipped. Suddenly uncomfortable, she walked out of the room. Emily was discharged an hour later with an appointment to get the stitches removed and the numbers of several good psychiatrists in her mother's purse.

Emily Wood never saw Cristina Yang again, but two years later, she was accepted into the pre-medicine program at her top-choice college.

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><p>AN: I hope that was an enjoyable read, it kind of came out of nowhere for me. Constructive criticism, or any sort of review, would be golden.


End file.
